I am a writer who is deeply committed to helping to change how older women are perceived in North America. There is a beauty, intelligence and inherent eroticism about them that a younger woman can only dream of, and there is a significant pool of men out there who “get” it. I am not so much interested in the cougar stereotype but rather, it is the authentic older woman who inspires me. My role models are Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

There is nothing in
this world more essential to life than hope. Where it lacks, there is no light.
Hope, to me, is the breath of life; it emboldens you and makes you brave; the
echo of promise, ever present. It lifts you up when you are leaden, and keeps
you going when you feel weak. Hope, of all things, reminds you to dream, no
matter how things might look; it is optimism given license….the quiet whisper
that says, it is possible. You deserve
it. What is yours will come.

I just turned 50
today. And I am so excited. I am telling everyone who will listen I am 50! The
way I see it, today marks my induction into a new life passage; the best years
of my life. I can’t explain it, but I feel proud to be 50. I know, with the
years, the tiny brutalities of aging will continue to hit me – a changing body,
discrimination, invisibility. But I intend to find refuge – even salvation – in
my aged worldview, unfettered by petty grievance or the silliness of youth. To
live in a way that integrates everything I’ve learned into my visceral self,
edging me slowly to a different way of being that says, this is your life. It is a gift. Relax and enjoy the ride. Make every
day count. Dedicate your focus to finding beauty, even in what isn’t pretty.
Endeavor to be kind. Don’t ever forget that hope is the chalice on the altar of
dreams. And to keep it alive, don’t look back.

[To Jerry – whose
encouragement, support and generosity of spirit have given me hope, in the most
profound sense of the word.]

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

If our “second
adulthood” had a jumping-off point, it seems to me it would be the year we turn
50. Up until that point, I think, we often carry on as a version of our younger
selves, still bound to the ideals of a culture bent on youth. We get smarter
about how we spend our time and have a stronger feel for who we are, but we’re
not quite at the point where we’re counting the years we might have left. If we
choose to, we can still deny the process at hand, and unless we have terrible
genes, we can fare quite well.

But our 50s are a
whole new era. It gets a lot harder to play make believe. Yet if our eyes are
open, we gain access to a new pool of wisdom, and we can start to get our feet
wet. Pretending loses its appeal. We begin to let go and enjoy the freedom that
comes with aging.

At least, that is
what many women have told me, and what I, in turn, believe, in the most
visceral sense one can have. I am about to turn 50 in ten days; the beginning, as
a friend of mine calls it, of my “second wind”.

I am aching for a
revolution. More than that, I am aching to relax, in every conceivable way. And
nothing brought that home more than my mother, just out of the hospital, set on
a regimen, unwilling to consult a second opinion. Without going into details, let’s
just say that what I saw in her scared the daylights out of me. Because it was
a blown up version of something I’d been witness to my whole life: an
unquestioning loyalty to an authority outside herself, and a “pulling in” – not
the kind of pulling in we do in introspection, but a pulling in that involves
tightening, holding in or holding on.

I know she is doing
the best she can with what she has. I know she is fighting the only way she
knows how – her “pulling in”, oddly, is also a form of protest. But it doesn’t
help, because I want to see her happy, and because of what it triggers in me. I
am deathly afraid of becoming rigid as I age. In my experience, one of the many
challenges of getting older is a tendency to resist change, even when our
sanity, or peace of mind, depend largely on the contrary. Living in a society
where elders are so grossly undervalued, it’s easy to hold our emotions in as
we tell ourselves, nobody wants to know anyway. If we become bitter about
society’s disregard for us, we would often be wholly justified.

But do we want to
sacrifice our quality of life to silent protest? I certainly don’t. Nor do I
want to become set in my ways – yet I have already seen signs that this is
where I am headed. And it’s chilling. I remind myself that my stress levels are
high; that seizing up is all I’ve known, and that I am actively working to
unlearn it. Then my mother re-enters my consciousness, and the haunting
resumes.

In many ways, she
and I are polar opposites in our personalities, priorities and character. We
would never be friends if we weren’t related. We have worked hard to find
common ground over the years, and to focus on the love we have for one another.
And I do love her – fiercely, desperately, and without bounds. But her way of
coping; of dealing with her emotions, really fucks me up. I can’t be around it.
I need fluidity. I need to learn how to really relax into life, and to court
change. And I hope as I enter my 50s, I can find the strength to do just that.

The Theme of This Blog

I cover a variety of topics on this blog, but I endeavor to relate them, in some way, to the honoring of older women, or to challenging conventional ideas about aging. So while I enjoy writing on all kinds of subjects, my aim is to tie each post into one of these themes -- though at first glance, I'm sure it doesn't appear that way! I am just getting my feet wet; I am a "young" blogger, if you will. Thank you for joining me here.

Who I Am

I am a writer, editor and journalist looking to stimulate, inspire or encourage public discussion, on a national level, that helps change attitudes around aging for the better. Toward that end, I have come up with the concept of a dating site that celebrates the sensuality and wisdom of the older woman, and have found two incredible men working hard to make it a reality. SeptemberMay will be launching soon.
I produce and host a radio program, Being There, on campus radio, featuring in-depth interviews on a wide range of subjects. And as a writer, I specialize in being able to articulate with eloquence exactly what a person is trying to say but cannot find the right words for - a form of ghostwriting, but much more than that. I do web sites, book projects, BIOs, resumes and much more.